Michael Mitchellson

Name: Michael Mitchellson

Gender: Male

Age: 17

Grade: 12th

School: Aurora High School

Hobbies and Interests: Literature, browsing the internet, Technology in general, Video Games, Tae Kwon Do, Tabletop RPGs, Book Club.

Appearance: Michael has short, spiky, light blond hair. He is a bit short, about 5'6", and weighs a healthy 140 pounds, with a medium frame. His full face is rather freckly, though acne-free. He has light blue eyes, thin, blonde eyebrows, and is clean-shaven. Michael has no piercings. He had braces for all of middle school and the first year of high school, resulting in his teeth being straight. His nose is about medium size. He is fairly muscular due to his martial arts training.

Michael loves wearing bright clothing, light green being a favorite. He prefers wearing button-down shirts, typically with the collar upturned. He tends to dress lightly, even during winter, not being bothered by the cold. He loved the Indiana Jones movies, and as such has recently started wearing dark fedoras, considering them to be the best type of hat. He was wearing this type of outfit on the day of the abduction, with a light green button-down shirt, jeans, and a brown, leather fedora.

Biography: Michael was born deaf, a fact that he tends to take in stride and ignore whenever possible. He usually communicates through his friends, (such as Daniel) whenever possible, though when caught alone he resorts to using text-to-speech utilities on his phone or, in truly drastic cases, a pen and pad of notepaper he carries with him at all times.

Michael sometimes gets annoyed by how he often has to rely on others to relay his words (though he doesn't take it out on them,) and as such often overcompensates by trying to charge through problems, and with the forcefulness of his speech, trying to pack as much energy as possible into his words and actions. He doesn't really think much about his deafness, aside from the occasional annoyance when it causes difficulty, mostly due to the fact that he's never known anything else.

He was an only child, raised alone by his father, Paul, after his mother died in a car accident when Michael was about five months old. Although Michael was born in California, after the death of Michael's mother Paul was forced to work increasingly hard to support the both of them. Paul worked as a full-time paramedic, but it is not a very lucrative job, and so was forced to move to Seattle where his parents lived, who were able to provide some much needed support.

Michael has a very close relationship with his grandparents, due to often being left at their house while his father worked. While Michael loves and respects his father, the two aren't very close, though Paul does his best to spend time with him. Michael's grandparents pretty much took over the role of raising him. Both of his grandparents are still alive today and while Michael spends a lot of his time alone at his house, he still visits his grandparents often.

Being a somewhat lonely child, only being able to communicate with his dad, grandparents, and teacher at school (there was a class specifically for disabled children, but none of the handful of other children knew sign language) he was thus overjoyed when, at the age of six, he met Daniel, his next door neighbor who understood sign language due to having a deaf sister. The two soon became close friends, with Daniel often translating for Michael.

Michael started reading at an early age, due to it being one of the few forms of media that had no auditory component (he had a hard time following the subtitles on TV as a child, due to their speed) and thus became a lifelong lover of literature, favoring speculative fiction such as Discworld and The Belgariad. During his freshman year of high school, he started a book club with Daniel (ignoring protests that it was pretty much what they did together normally, anyway) and has over the years assembled a small group of members.

He also fell in love with computers early on, using Paul's computer to play Edutainment games, (which eventually grew to a general interest in video games) though he couldn't use the internet without supervision. As he grew older, and was allowed to browse the web on his own, he found himself drawn to sites such as TV Tropes, where he was introduced to tabletop RPGs. He's still a dedicated Troper today, along with frequenting forums dedicated to tabletop games.

Michael mostly plays tabletop games online, due to the ease of communication, but enjoys playing in real life whenever he can drag Daniel along with him to translate. He doesn't really have a preferred system, as long as it works, and allows for creativity, he'll happily play it.

Paul, concerned with his son's tendency to stay indoors, enrolled him in a Tae Kwon Do class specifically for deaf children, in order to get him some exercise during elementary school. Michael resented it, at first, but soon discovered that he had a talent for it, having a blue belt as he entered his senior year of high school.

At school, Michael excels at English, computers, and math, though he struggles a bit in science and history. On average, he tends to get an equal amount of A's and B's.

Due to being in a special class, Michael doesn't know many of his fellow students, at the most vaguely recognizing the faces he's seen passing by in the halls. Because of this, he does not have very many friends outside of his book club, though he is on friendly terms with the handful of students who can speak in sign language. For the most part, Michael isn't bothered too much by the isolation, though at times the feeling of being singled out due to his deafness frustrates him.

He hasn't really had any relationships with the opposite sex, mostly owing to the difficulty of romance by proxy.

In general, Michael is cheerful, energetic and optimistic. He often unintentionally offends people due to the directness of his speech. Despite this, he makes an effort to be kind to others unless they insult him in some manner, after which he'll happily let loose a storm of insults which lose most of their impact due to the often deadpan delivery of his translators.

Advantages: Michael is healthy due to practicing Tae Kwon Do. He is also rather intelligent, and his optimism might make it easier to remain mentally stable.

Disadvantages: Michael is deaf, and has a tendency to charge headlong into situations without thinking things through. His direct, forceful manner may turn away some people.

Designated Number: Male student No. 019

---

Designated Weapon: Pancor Jackhammer, slightly used

Conclusion: B019 might stand a chance except for the fact that he's totally fucked the second danger zones and killers get announced. He better hope he never wanders far from anyone, because he'll need to know when to run to avoid blowing up. Maybe we should talk to Lourvey about making the collars more friendly to disabled students. - Christina Stockton

'The above biography is as written by dmboogie. No edits or alterations to the author's original work have been made.'

Evaluations
Handled by: dmboogie

Kills: None

Killed By: Shot himself by accident

Collected Weapons: Pancor Jackhammer (designated weapon)

Allies: Timothy Abrams, Miles Strickland, Rachael Langdon, Christopher Harlin, Madeline Wilcox, Joe Carrasco

Enemies: Hansel Williams

Mid-game Evaluation:

Post-Game Evaluation:

Memorable Quotes:

Other/Trivia

 * Michael is at least SOTF's third deaf character.

Threads
Below is a list of threads that contain Michael, in chronological order.

The Past:
 * A Carol of Cookies and Christmas

Pre-Game:
 * Set Lasers to Fun
 * If You Got It, Ball Out
 * HEAVEN OR HELL? LET'S ROCK!
 * I Put on My Robe and Wizard Hat

V5:
 * The Heavy Weapons Guy
 * Can't watch TV here, guys. The reception's terrible.
 * Lying on the Streets
 * Stand Your Ground(s)
 * The Best Part Of Waking Up
 * If I had known this, I would have put that patch on 35 years ago
 * Adam & Eve & Steve
 * Maybe You're a Joker, Maybe You Deserve to Die
 * The Faster The Treadmill
 * I Was Once Alive
 * I Am A Hero
 * Layabout
 * There are some things a man just can't run away from.

Your Thoughts
''Whether you were a fellow handler in SOTF or just an avid reader of the site, we'd like to know what you thought about Michael Mitchellson. What did you like, or dislike, about the character? Let us know here!''

Michael was the bright spot of V5 for a lot of people, having the most humor-filled narrative of the bunch. He felt truly real in a way that most other characters like him - with a disability - just don't, and dmboogie really pulled out all the stops in making his voice very strong, and very funny. The problems with Michael's arc do come from things somewhat out of boogie's control, which make them very frustrating - his inability to learn that his best friend is dead due to his deafness goes on for so long largely due to characters who could tell him via sign language going inactive - but it comes back in a very nice way, when boogie manages to turn his story to one of vengeance when Michael actually does learn who did it. I wasn't in love with his death post - there was some confusing language utilized - but the result was a good character, solid in formation, who has a little bit of drag and a lot of bad OOC luck. -- NotAFlyingToy